Pushed to the Edge (SEAL Team 14) (5 page)

“Are there any disease surveillance protocols that
are in place currently, to track whether or not a smallpox outbreak is starting
somewhere?”  Joshua asked.

“Right now, there is the BioSense program. 
BioSense is our national notifiable disease surveillance system, where U.S.
physicians are required to report to the CDC persons infected with certain
symptoms of listed diseases.  The problem with this reporting method is that by
the time medical providers report symptoms it will likely be too late.  Smallpox
spreads like wildfire,” Dr. Kale answered.  “The most assured protection is
inoculation, but at this point, that will be the last case scenario. 
Vaccinating millions of Americans for smallpox would sound an alarm to the
terrorists and may actually hasten the disease’s dissemination.  In addition,
given the potential side effects of the vaccination, it could take many months
before the current population reaches herd immunity.  If we begin to receive
reports of individuals being infected then the other type of action that we
could take would be to isolate those individuals who are infected or quarantine
the group of individuals who have been exposed to the virus.”

“On the military side, we are also investigating
potential laboratories that could be used by this terrorist organization in
order to weaponize any stolen samples of the smallpox virus,” Mark Dewitt
added. 

“But basically our hands are tied right now?” Will
asked into the intercom.

“Yes, for the moment,” Mark Dewitt said.  From the
expression on his face, he wasn’t happy about the situation.  SEALs were men of
action, so knowing that a palpable threat to U.S. citizens existed, but not
being able to do anything about it was extremely frustrating. 

“But we have operatives in the field and stateside
analysts who, as we speak, are trying to gather and interpret as much
information as they can about the Haqqai group,” Dewitt continued, “They
couldn’t have just appeared out of thin air, but right now they are a fucking
mystery.  For the time being, the Team will stay put there in Germany and
continue with training exercises to prepare for go time.  I’ll be joining you
at Ramstein within the next couple of days.  Any more questions?”

“I have one, sir.”  All of the SEAL Team Fourteen
members simultaneously turned their heads to the left end of the table as Luke
piped up.  The soldier had sandy brown hair and stood at over 6’0’’ on a good
day.  Luke was relatively new to the Team—having been on SEAL Team Fourteen for
one year—and he was probably the most talkative.  He was also one of the
youngest members; he’d just turned twenty-four a month ago. 

 “What about Henning, sir?  I mean his
kidnapping.  What are the odds that he’s snatched up right when this Haqqai
group is gearing up to unleash a bioterrorist attack?  It seems suspect.  Does
he just have incredibly piss poor luck or is it possible that he’s somehow
twisted up in this shitstorm?”

Now that was the million-dollar question on
everyone’s mind.  It wouldn’t be the first time that a privileged American had
been found elbow deep in a cookie jar that they shouldn’t have been in. 

“Listen Luke, at the moment we do not have any
indication that Henning was more than an innocent victim of a rogue terrorist
cell.  But you had better believe that we have people who are thoroughly
vetting the former Congressman and his acquaintances.  Okay men, if there are
no more questions, you are dismissed.”

ill loved to run.  Given
how conditioned he was, he could run six miles flat out before his hands even
started to shake, or before his legs faltered. 

He wasn’t just a distance runner either.  Not to
be mistaken, he did have endurance but he also had
speed
.  He had
started out in track in high school, and had earned numerous metals in all of
the “-yard dash” categories. 

For the past seven years, every morning when he
woke up—rain or shine, he did a five-mile run.  So naturally, after the team’s
post-mission briefing with their CO, and knowledge that they would be staying
in Germany for an extended period of time, he sought out the best running
trail. 

The trail that he had become accustomed to began
in a recreational park at the rear of the Ramstein Air Base where the SEAL team
members’ housing accommodations were located, went past the medical center, and
ended up at the Rhine River.  It was now mid-October so his running gear
consisted of a heavy gray sweat suit and a beanie.  Today, he’d made it to the
riverfront in under twenty-eight minutes. 

Well, well, what do we have here?
  To his
surprise, leaning forward with one long leg stretching out on a bench near the
water was Dr. Olivia Lewis. 

She was wearing a black sweat suit with her long
brown-blonde hair pulled back into a ponytail that nearly touched her waist. 
She looked athletic, yet fragile.  And that was one hell of a combination. 
That impossibly slim body of hers was now contorted into an awkward,
gravity-defying position.  Olivia didn’t seem to notice him approach because
she didn’t make any attempt to stop stretching or turn toward him. 

“Hey.”  Olivia started at the sound of his voice,
almost tipping over.  She turned around, a startled expression on her face. 
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to frighten you.”

Recognition flooded her face.  She removed her leg
from the bench and slowly straightened her position.  She was visibly
uncomfortable, twisting her fingers around her long ponytail.  A light sheen of
sweat was on her face.  She was also fidgeting slightly, shifting her weight
from one foot to the other as she looked up at him.

“Oh hey.  You didn’t frighten me.” 

Will took a step forward toward Olivia, and she
automatically took a step back.  She really was a tiny woman.  Will estimated
that she was of about average height for a woman.  She couldn’t have been more
than 110 pounds soaking wet.  At 6’4’’ and over 200 pounds, he dwarfed her. 

“I didn’t know that you were a runner,” he said
while she stood there staring back at him.  Her eyes narrowed with suspicion. 
Will could not figure out what her problem was for the life of him.  Women
generally fell in droves for him.  He managed to charm the pants—quite
literally—off most of the women that he came across.  And honestly, he had
never really had to try that hard before. 

“Why would you?  I just met you the other day,”
she replied, turning around to resume her run.

“Yeah, well I was thinking that maybe we could
change that,” Will said quickly, before she could take off on him.  He
plastered a smile across his face and tried to go on a charm offensive with
her. 

Olivia slowly turned back around to look at him
squarely in the eyes.  Will pressed on, “You know maybe we could grab a drink
or something after one of your shifts at the hospital.”

“Look, I hope that you don’t take what I’m about
to say the wrong way.  I’m sure that you’re a nice enough guy, but you’re not
really my type,” Olivia replied matter-of-factly.  Her gorgeous blue eyes were
as icy cold as the Rhine River flowing beside them.

He let out a dry laugh that was filled with
irritation.  “Well, that’s good to know
Dr. Lewis
.  You know, I was just
trying to be nice to you because you’re friends with one of my best buds.  But since
we’re being honest here, you are not really my type either,
sweetheart
. 
You’re too skinny for my tastes.  I also prefer my women less mouthy.” 

Will wasn’t sure how she would respond to his
insult.  He was half-expecting that she would try to clock him in the face. 
She was a tiny woman but he did not doubt for a minute that if she swung on
him, she would give it her all to try to lay him out on the ground. 

In a million years, he couldn’t have foreseen her
actual response to his provocation.  She smiled at him.  She really had an
incredible smile. 

The only thing that ruined the moment was the fact
that that very smile happened to be accompanied by her right middle finger,
which she threw his way right before she turned around to finish her run back
to the medical center. 

****

Colleen Bradshaw was finally making headway.  She
leaned forward in her seat to squint down at the Macbook Air screen before
her.  She looked around her small apartment and up at her living room wall
clock, and saw that it was already close to five o’clock p.m.  Picking up the
reading glasses that she’d placed on the table an hour ago, she put them back
on and then peered closely at the illuminated screen on her lap. 

Colleen worked for the National Security Agency. 
The NSA acted as a complement to the Central Intelligence Agency and the
Federal Bureau of Investigation’s counterintelligence unit.  NSA agents acted
in such heightened anonymity that, even in the covert operations world where
virtually everyone was wrapped in shadow, the NSA was jokingly referred to as
“No Such Agency.”  She was what those in the military community called a ghost. 
The only agents scarier than ghosts were JSOC operatives known as “snake
eaters.”  You sure as shit had better be ready to meet your maker if one of them
ever came knocking at your door.  Though odds are they wouldn’t give you the
courtesy of a knock.

Colleen was a seemingly nondescript, white female,
with long, dark brown hair.  Some would even say that she had a mousy
appearance.  Maybe she
did
have a mousy appearance.  But she worked hard
to preserve that appearance.  In the covert operations world, it generally
wasn’t recommended for agents to stand out.  Therefore, Colleen had become
quite the expert at blending into her surroundings. 

She also had, and what the Agency had desperately
needed at the time of her recruitment, a penchant for languages.  She had
attended Harvard University and double majored in both Arabic and Russian—and
graduated
summa cum laude
in each.  She’d also studied six other
languages including Slovak, French, Kurdish, Urdu and Spanish—and was fluent in
four of them. 

She joined the military when she was eighteen
years old and then was recruited into counterintelligence.  At the time, it had
been a way for her to escape her troubled childhood.  After joining the Agency,
she had trained in two different types of martial arts.  Her training spanned
over the course of years, and was still ongoing, but she had already earned
first-degree black belts in both.  In a fight, she could without a doubt handle
herself. 

Colleen’s first mission had been an undercover
assignment as an au pair for the young sons of a prominent Slovakian
businessman, Marco Vladzick.  Marco had caught the CIA and the NSA’s eyes when
he began consorting with an Islamic extremist group that was located in Mali
called Jahaat ul-Mujahideen. 

The Slovakian businessman couldn’t have cared less
that he was working with an anti-American terrorist organization.  His personal
sentiments weren’t necessarily anti-American, so much as they were pro-
money
. 

Marco had built his entire empire off the backs of
young girls and women forced into the sex trade and through a lucrative
narcotics trafficking business in Eastern Europe.  It was through the drug
trade that he had linked up with the radical Islamic group.  Helping to bring
down Marco Vladzick had been one of the highlights of her career. 

She’d had the distinct pleasure of putting a
bullet right between his cold, brown eyes.  

That was seven years ago, and now she had received
both an order from her bosses at the NSA and a separate request from an old
friend—if she could call him that—to gather as much intel as she could about a
new terrorist cell coming out of Pakistan called the Haqqai network.  Whatever
sordid stuff this group was involved in, a lot of people were certainly
interested in finding out more about them. 

This assignment was more difficult because she
wasn’t actually on the ground, but she had been in contact with NSA agents who
were.  Per protocol, they referred to one another as numbers—agents were never
told the names, real or fake, of other agents.  Colleen was number “Four” and
had been in frequent contact with number “Seven” for about two weeks now. 
Seven was on the ground and had been on assignment in Pakistan for about three
years. 

Her cover as Colleen Bradshaw had been one of the
easiest assignments that she had had so far—but she did miss the adrenaline
rush of working out there in the “field.”  She was currently employed at the
undergraduate school of Brevard College, an elite, private women’s college, in
New York.  Brevard College also had just opened an international campus in
Rome, Italy. 

Colleen’s role at the university was as an
undergraduate school fundraiser.  As a fundraiser, to the outward world, she
led an unquestionably dull life.  This cover was very flexible and allowed her
ample opportunity to conduct research and analysis for the Agency. 

Brevard College was a mecca of sorts when it came
to the higher education of the daughters of the American elite.  Naturally, the
college was not off limits to the international elite.  There were plenty of
Saudi and British businessmen who sent their daughters to the prestigious
university every year.  Colleen was sure that many of those fathers hoped that
their daughters would graduate with a MRS. Degree that would enable them to turn
off their financial faucets.  Or at the very least, reduce the flow of money to
their incorrigible offspring. 

Fittingly, the gothic halls of the campus were
always busy with preparations for one gala or another.  It was through these
events, that Colleen was able to make valuable connections. 

Colleen’s job was to speak with foreign subjects
who were under close watch by the NSA and CIA.  It was within these contacts as
University Fundraiser that Colleen helped other analysts at the Agency build
complex TSPs (Terror Suspect Profiles). 

This type of work was tedious and required her to
engage in extensive quantitative and qualitative analyses by utilizing her
points of contact.  While it was interesting to engage in this type of study of
terrorist behavior, Colleen missed the excitement that came with working in the
field. 

Earlier yesterday, Seven had emailed her triple
secured email account and attached an encrypted 300-page computer file.  It had
taken her five hours to un-encrypt the document and she was just starting to
make headway through it.  It had seemed like a bust at first, but she’d finally
come across a few interesting photos. 

The first was of Richard Henning, whose dramatic
rescue by Special Forces had been widely discussed by talk show hosts, radio
show hosts, and television news pundits.  The photograph of Henning had been
taken while he was in Afghanistan.  His picture had been snapped just as he was
entering a black SUV on his way to speak with the President of Afghanistan. 

The photo was remarkable because in it was another
familiar face: Dr. Saverin Tarasov.  Both Henning and Dr. Tarasov had family
members who were juniors at Brevard and both men had attended a spring
fundraiser held at the college.  Colleen had introduced herself to Dr. Tarasov
at the spring gala.  Dr. Tarasov was a well-known chemist for a Russian
pharmaceutical company named Nava Drug Corp. 

Dr. Tarasov, however, wasn’t under the watchful
eye of multiple international intelligence agencies only because of his employment
with the drug company.  He had a friendship with key players in the Al-Jaazeez
terror network—an extremist group that had emerged out of Iran in the 1990s. 

More recently, Dr. Tarasov’s friendship had
expanded from Al-Jaazeez to Dr. Haseem Adil.  Dr. Adil was an Afghan scientist
associated with the Taliban, and who had participated in the mujahedeen’s asymmetrical
warfare against the invasion by the Soviets in the 1980s.  Like Tarasov, Adil
was tall and thin, but those were the only commonalities of their appearances. 
Adil was brown-skinned with brown eyes and Tarasov had brown hair and had a
pasty appearance.

Colleen spent another five hours shifting through
the rest of the documents in the file.  While the connection between Richard
Henning and Dr. Tarasov was interesting it was still quite tenuous at best. 
There was nothing to suggest that Dr. Adil was acquainted with Henning or
conspiring with him in any way. 

Moreover, there wasn’t anything in the record to
imply that either party worked with the Haqqai network.  Blowing out a
frustrated breath, Colleen got up from her sofa and went to take a shower.  It
was past ten o’clock p.m. and she had a lot of moves to make tomorrow.

****

There really was nothing quite as liberating as
free falling down from the heavens and barreling toward the earth at 120 miles
per hour
.  Joshua pinned his arms to his side and plummeted downward
through the darkened sky. 

Over the length of his career, he’d probably been
on over two hundred plane jumps.  But Joshua enjoyed it every time.  It was
currently around 2100 hours.  He and his team were practicing HALO jumps under
the cover of darkness.  Because of the covert nature of their operations,
nighttime was the most opportune time to catch their targets at their most
vulnerable moment.